CIM picks first managing director for Holdings arm

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) has appointed Katherine Tickle to the newly created role of managing director of CIM Holdings, the trade body’s commercial arm.

Tickle will be in charge of training, conferences and CIM Direct, which includes the organisation’s bookshop. She will report to the CIM Holdings Board, of which she has been a member for some years.

She has considerable experience in the business information industry, and was formerly managing director of specialist publishing group Barbour Index.

Tickle’s appointment does not affect the overall management situation at the CIM. Sonia Modray, the body’s finance director, continues as acting chief executive. The previous chief executive, Christine Cryne – who joined CIM in March 2005 – resigned in July after several months’ sick leave.

Modray took over as acting chief executive during Cryne’s illness. Cryne has subsequently been named director for Consumer Direct at the Office of Fair Trading.

Cryne was appointed after a long search to find a successor to Peter Fisk, who left the CIM suddenly in April 2004 after only 14 months in the position.

In August last year, the CIM hired former News International and Which? marketer Geoff Hurst as its marketing director (MW August 25, 2005), filling a role which had been empty for three years. Hurst is responsible for raising the profile of the CIM.